Nineteen ways to keep the faith in these desolate times

A friend from Jerusalem sent me a
one-sentence e-mail the other day:
"What do you do to prepare for the
end of the world?" She wasn't
kidding. Here's my answer.

1. Peel head off pillow. Drink coffee.
Let firewall drop, the one you've built
over the past few years for survival
and sanity, and allow news of day to
penetrate while getting kids off to
school. Worry about
their/your/everybody's future. Turn to
sports page. Wake up and smell the
pennant race.

2. Drive around lake with daughter,
who loves Macy Gray song that
starts, "Funk, funk, funky for you." Roll
down window so she can sing her
version to rollerbladers and joggers,
though, thanks to four-year-old
tongue, "funks" sound like
something else. Try hard to stop her,
but laugh even harder, which is
good, with the world ending and all.

James O'Brien

3. Crank up Solomon Burke's
"Always Keep a Diamond in Your
Mind." And Hank Williams's "Wait for
the Light to Shine." And Terence
Trent D'Arby's "I Have Faith in These
Desolate Times."

4. Think about faith. Not how faith
healers or faith-based religions
might have you think, but the word
itself. Like the Greek pistis,
which means "belief, trust, faith," and
the Hebrew enuma, which
means "amen," or "faith." Think about
dictionary definition: "Belief and trust
in and loyalty to God" and "firm belief
in something for which there is no
proof." Dig it.

5. Read everything you can get your
hands on about living in the moment,
paying attention, staying present.
Practice it. Be it. Live it. So that when
end of world comes, you'll be
really alert and won't miss a
thing.

6. Drive over to House of Mercy, the
rockin' little Baptist church in
Lowertown St. Paul, where you've
seen the likes of Charlie Louvin and
Ralph Stanley, if not Jesus. Tell
preacher, Russell Rathbun, that
you've been thinking about faith lately
and that you've got a hunch that it
might be important, in these
desolate times and all.

Listen as he says, "People aren't
thinking about this. People aren't
talking about faith. We're not at a time
when people are being called to
faith, or where people are really
looking for this true deeper faith.
People aren't doing that. It's almost
like faith isn't relevant in
marketing-based culture. It's so
needed, but that's not what's going
on, at all. People just can't see that
far into the future, because everything
is sold to us, and people get very
cynical when everything is sold to
you. So everything has this equal
level of value, which is... disposable.
You know, when you sell people God
the same way you sell them Surge
Cola, they will respond to God with
the same seriousness they respond
to Surge Cola with."

7. Hang out on dock with
fishing-addicted son. Put worms on
hook. Wipe worm guts on jeans. Put
hot dog on hook. Catch sunfish.
Catch perch. Get hook caught in
hands, leg, jeans. Sit for hours. Be
calm. Present. Happy. Bored. Nuts.
Witness son catch big bass that lives
under dock and that has been his
Moby Dick for past four days. Tell
end-of-worlders they can take you
now.

8. Chat up a couple of ex-preacher
pals, who tell you same thing, almost
verbatim: "There have always been
desolate times. Don't believe the
hype."

9. Make list of great teachers you've
had, not only in classrooms, but
barrooms and bedrooms; cynical
ones who taught you how to be
skeptical, but also ones who taught
you how to love, hurt, forgive, grow,
get bigger and more inclusive and
realize that there's no ceiling to
human connection, or any of the
other stuff that takes your breath
away and mind off end of world.

10. Heed advice of late, great Warren
Zevon: "Enjoy every sandwich."

11. Go to trendy sweaty yoga place
where instead of finding perfect
balance you sometimes find yourself
wanting to strangle loudmouthed
aerobics-instructors-as-gurus. Let it
be. Find inner peace. After class,
hike down to Le Cirque Rouge de
Gus in the old New French
Café spot, where beautiful
women sing torch songs of love and
lust and life, and burlesque dancers
who could be hatched from an
unholy marriage between Ballet of
the Dolls and St. Sabrina's Parlor in
Purgatory writhe the night away. Find
inner peace.

12. Refuse to minimize fact that
Black Eyed Peas' song, "Where is
the Love?"
(Lennon-Gaye-Marley-Timberlake,
2003), a worried song sung by
worried men and women about/to a
worried world, has been most
popular song on Top 40 radio for
past month.

13. See presidential address. See
stars-and-striped post-game recaps.
Hear Leonard Cohen: "Everybody
knows that the dice are
loaded/Everybody rolls with their
fingers crossed/Everybody knows
that the war is over/Everybody knows
that the good guys lost/Everybody
knows the fight was fixed/The poor
stay poor, the rich get rich/That's how
it goes, everybody knows/Everybody
knows that the boat is
leaking/Everybody knows that the
captain lied/Everybody got this
broken feeling/Like their father or
their dog just died."

14. Hear preacher Rathbun: "All the
people that I hang out with and all the
people in my congregation, it's
people who have had that big crisis
of faith or are in the midst of having a
crisis of faith, or trying to believe
again. But I never really have had a
crisis of faith. I just can't help
believing, you know? I've had times
where it matters less to me, certainly.
Absolutely. But I operate in the world
with this assumption that there is a
loving creator, something beyond
me. I sort of trust the unfolding and
have faith that things will come about
the way they're going to come about.
You know, good things will come
about. Beautiful things will come
about. And it's not my job to be in
control of the way things happen."

15. Drive nephew, on his 18th
birthday, to his girlfriend's house.
Talk about existentialism class he
wants to teach at his high school,
and about Nietzsche, who said, "God
is dead" as well as, "There is one
thing one has to have: Either a soul
that is cheerful by nature, or a soul
made cheerful by work, love, art, and
knowledge."

16. Go see George Clinton and
Parliament-Funkadelic at Fine Line.
Fixate for first half of set on grown
African-American man wearing only
diaper on stage. Feel the funk. With a
little help from old and new friends,
turn otherwise staid balcony into
mini-lovesexy dance party. As clock
nears midnight and as P-Funk trips
through version of "Flashlight" that
haunts of a simpler '70s and hopes
for a better '00s, raise glass and tell
everybody in earshot, "Happy
September 11th."

17. On September 11, 2003, walk
through same neighborhood you
walked through two years ago on this
day, in utter silence. Note sound of
planes overhead, cars and buses
clipping along, kids and dogs
howling. Talk with new neighbors
about their days-old baby, who has
been visited by a steady stream of
family and neighbors all week. Hold
baby. Decide that news of Trinity
Ryan's fuzzy black hair and look of
indestructible wonder in parents'
eyes is as newsworthy as anything
coming out of Minneapolis, St. Paul,
Washington, Jerusalem.